Whether they carry gas, liquids or electrical energy, utility lines that span geographic regions can fail for a number of reasons, including seismic events, windstorms, falling debris, and byproducts of human actions. Such failures are particularly important because they can be catastrophic to life, such as in the case of a complete failure of a pipeline carrying explosive or toxic matter. Additionally, these failures are expensive in terms of both the labor and time required to locate the failure and repair the line, in addition to the cost and negative publicity of the resulting loss of service occurring during this time. Accordingly, it is of the utmost of importance to be able to efficiently monitor and troubleshoot utility lines to ensure safety and availability of service.
Fault detection apparatus is already present in some types of existing utility lines. For example, breakers in electrical transmission lines may be coupled to telemetry systems that indicate breaker trippage to remote operation centers of utility companies. However, the fact that a breaker has tripped only isolates the fault to the segment downstream of the tripped breaker or between a pair of tripped breakers. Due to the length, remote geographic placement, and/or difficulty of access to many utility lines, substantial time and cost could be saved if a more precise location of a fault were readily available, preferably through automated means.